Six minutes into the second half of the national championship, Tarris Reed Jr. scored. Michigan, his old team, were up by eight. Reed was wearing UConn colours. Fourteen rebounds would follow before the final whistle.
Reed had played at Michigan for two seasons, becoming a full-time starter in 2023-24. Then Dusty May arrived as head coach, brought in two new centres through the transfer portal, and Reed's path closed. May handled it professionally. He was direct about what was happening. Reed later said: "I talked to him multiple times. I like Coach May, and he was just being super up front with who he was bringing in." Reed entered the portal and landed at UConn under Dan Hurley.
TWO YEARS, ONE FINAL.
Reed ended up at the one programme in the country built on the philosophical opposite of what Michigan was constructing. Hurley's UConn develops players from high school, demands academic accountability, and treats culture as something you build rather than buy. Six of UConn's top nine scorers this season were homegrown. Hurley has described what this creates: "Our culture is unique. It's specific. Takes a certain type of player to play for me. When those relationships are forged through a recruiting period as a high school player, they really buy in and believe in your programme."
Under Hurley, Reed became that type of player. First Team All-Big East. In the 2026 tournament he averaged 21.7 points and 13.5 rebounds across four wins, earning East Region Most Outstanding Player. He walked into the championship final against Michigan with more to prove than anyone else on the court.
"It's not personal," he said before the game. The 14 rebounds suggested otherwise.
WHAT THE SPREADSHEET MISSES
Michigan won 69-63. Their all-transfer starting five, the first in championship history, combined for 52 of the team's 69 points. Elliot Cadeau, arrived from North Carolina, was named tournament Most Outstanding Player. The portal strategy worked.
But "worked" is doing considerable lifting.
Reed's performance was the best argument against Michigan's approach that Michigan's approach had produced. May's decision was rational, professionally executed, strategically coherent. It also created the most motivated opponent Michigan faced all season.
The build-versus-buy debate tends to focus on internal costs: integration friction, culture disruption, the risk that a high-profile arrival underperforms. These are real. But the hidden cost sits outside the organisation. When you acquire talent, you displace someone. That person goes somewhere. They carry knowledge of your systems, your tendencies, your gaps. And they carry something that cannot be purchased or predicted.
THE BILL ARRIVES LATE
May made his decision in the spring of 2024. The consequence walked onto the court in San Antonio two years later, in different colours, and nearly won.
Michigan held on. The margin was six points, thinner than the talent gap suggested it should be. Most organisations never see the displacement cost this clearly. The person moves on, surfaces somewhere less visible, and the connection between the original decision and the eventual consequence is too diffuse to trace.
Here it was direct. One rational talent call. One player with a precise score to settle. One Monday night in April where the gap was a lot smaller than it had any right to be.
May got away with it. He won't always know when he does.
TRY IT YOURSELF
🔄 Think about your last significant external hire. Ask three questions:
👤 Who made way for them? Name the person, not just the role. If you can't, you haven't thought about the cost.
📍 Where are they now? If they landed at a competitor, how much do they know about you?
⏳ When will the bill arrive? May made his decision in 2024. It walked onto the court in 2026. The gap is the reason this rarely gets tracked.
The most motivated opponent in your market may be the capable person your last hire made expendable. FURTHER READING
📚 The Culture Code by Daniel Coyle
High-performance cultures are not assembled from talent — they are built through belonging, shared vulnerability, and sustained purpose, none of which can be compressed into a portal window.
🗣️ "PayPal" - Acquired Podcast, Episode 11 (Ben Gilbert & David Rosenthal)
eBay's acquisition of PayPal displaced a leadership team that went on to found Tesla, SpaceX, LinkedIn, YouTube, Yelp, and Palantir. The Tarris Reed story, at existential scale.
🧑💻 "How Dan Hurley drove UConn's Tarris Reed Jr. to his breaking point" - CBS
Reed's dark days at UConn, how he nearly left a second time, and what Hurley's specific investment actually required of him.
SOME FINAL WISE WORDS
"Men ought either to be well treated or crushed, because they can avenge themselves of lighter injuries, of more serious ones they cannot."
— Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince (1532), Chapter III
Until next time
Business lessons from the world of sport
